Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson touches on a number of sci-fi issues. Mostly, it is an invective against the colonization of other stars. It starts with a multi-generational starship traveling 1/10 the speed of light using nuclear fuel. Realistically, according to hard-sci-fi nuts this is about as fast as a spaceship can go. A shield a mile in diameter to protect the ship from collisions is replaced with an electronic shield. There are about a dozen zones each in the two sectors, A and B. The zones are connected by spokes, and the sectors are connected by a spine, if you can picture that.
The protagonist of the novel is Freya, the daughter of Devi. Freya begins the novel as a child, while Devi is the de facto leader of the expedition, the best friend of the ship's A.I., and the chief engineer. The ship eventually arrives at Tau Ceti, a star with a moon - Aurora - in the "habitable zone," which turns out to be quite inhospitable for various reasons. The inhabitability of Aurora causes one character to suggest that all star travel is futile.
I hadn't read Kim Stanley Robinson for 10 or 15 years, since I read his "Mars" Trilogy, along with the companion book, The Martians. I'm driving a lot and listening to a lot of sci-fi; I guess that the 17-hour audiobook took me nine days to listen to. With my upcoming job at Lyft starting soon, I'll probably be listening to even more audiobooks. I started Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, a short novel published in 1914 in Japan. That book might take me a little bit into next week, when I plan on getting back into sci-fi.
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